


Her eyes tightly closed

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the got_exchange comment fic meme round 2 on LJ. </p>
<p>Prompt was Petyr/Lysa, King's Landing (ASoS spoilers)<br/>Something about their relationship in King's Landing, how Petyr manipulates her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her eyes tightly closed

It isn’t difficult to find moments in which he can come to her. Although Lysa knows that she should refuse his offers and advances (after all, she should think of their _son_ at least, hard-won to say the least), it’s Petyr. Her Petyr, but not quite. After all, she’s married, Lady Arryn now, and although she isn’t so much a part of court life as her Lord is, tongues are hungry for gossip, minds starved for scandal. 

_It’s not what it looks like_ , she tells herself. _Just an old friend, risen high. We only speak of the past, and not the present, or what could be._

That is a lie, of course.

It’s Lysa’s hand that has forced Petyr’s rise, her quiet whispers in Jon’s ear, and he, eager to see his pale, careworn wife smile again, agrees, ensures a place in Council for his wife’s childhood companion. His honor blinds him to her true motives, and while practice and custom have decreed that her championing of this upstart remain honorable, she cannot help but feel a twinge of shame when all of her machinations, however transparent they are, come to fruition. 

*

“You see, I remembered,” Petyr says, brandishing a chain of wildflowers, which Lysa will later press in her book of hours, preserving it, locking it away lest it should be seen. She doesn’t answer at first, because her mind is, as it is now too often, in the Riverlands, running along the banks with Cat and Petyr, always struggling to keep up, always trailing behind. But she remembers now one day when they’d woven crowns, bedecked each other with fly-blown daisies, Petyr teasingly pulling Cat’s from her fiery locks and placing it crookedly on Lysa’s head. They’d all laughed, but later, when she was alone, she’d pressed it to her like a lover, savoring the memory, however slight, of his nimble fingers on her brow, Cat’s giggles, the blush that had risen to her cheeks when he’d bowed mockingly, calling her his lady. 

“I’ve never forgotten,” Lysa says softly, and hates herself. 

*

It is hard for her to believe that he is a man, and not the boy who she’d held in her heart. He’s still small and slender, yet elegant, without the graceless charm of his boyhood. And stylish, always clad in such finely-wrought garments, his neat moustache and beard adding the illusion of age and experience to his still-youthful features. When he brushes lips to her cheek to greet her, it scratches and she finds that she does not care for it, but holds her tongue.

Why spoil everything, after all? 

Petyr is careful to always appear solicitous, a cosmopolitan acquaintance, a chivalrous gentleman paying court to an old friend whose life would be lonely indeed without such attention, her husband bound up daily in affairs of state. Next to his graceful figure and sparkling conversation, Lysa feels plain and dull. She has not taken to the capital as he has, and her body has thickened from childbirth, although she takes care to cloak it in the finest gowns. But he never lets on that she is any different from the slender creature who ran laughing through the reeds, or the girl who’d taken him to her bed, once, with open arms and a foolishly transparent heart. 

He makes her feel young again. That is something. 

*

One evening, when she has retired early from an interminable feast, Petyr meets her in her rooms. He says nothing, but takes her hand and presses it to her lips. Lysa allows it, thinking that it can do no harm. When he spans her waist she permits that as well. And when his lips meet hers, she responds, thinking that she will put a stop to things before they go too far, but when they fall to the bed, her resolve falls away as easily as her dress. 

*

He hands her a small bottle after one of their clandestine meetings, and at first, thinking that it is perfume, uncaps it to daub a bit behind an ear, in her bosom, to show her appreciation. But Petyr stays her hands. 

“Take care, my love,” he says, and for once, the lilting note in his voice is gone. “I would not have you come to such an end.” 

And then he explains, in a whisper, nipping at her neck between her exclamations of shock, and then, as things progress, pleasure. It is a way for them to be together and isn’t that what she wants. It is the only way, of course. And no one will ever believe it possible. 

She tucks the bottle in the corner of a drawer stuffed with fripperies, handkerchiefs and half-spent pomades, tarnished rings in need of a cleaning, a place where no one will bother to look. It will keep there until the time is ripe. 

And then she yields, her eyes tightly closed.


End file.
